1. Field of the Present Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to an image forming system, an image forming apparatus, and a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a directory service such as Active Directory or e Directory is introduced to manage a user and a device in a network system. Today some image forming apparatuses such as printers, copiers, or multi function peripherals have a network function, and are capable of managing a user and a group (a section) using such a directory service. When user management is performed with a directory service, usually, a server apparatus of a directory service performs user authentication for a user who performs a login operation to an image forming apparatus.
On the other hand, some image forming apparatuses perform authorization process to enable a login user to use only a function of which usage is permitted for the login user among sorts of functions. In general, in the authorization process, usage restriction information that specifies a function of which usage is permitted (or a function of which usage is prohibited) is set in the image forming apparatus in advance, and functions that the login user uses are restricted in accordance with the usage restriction information. Further, in some systems, the usage restriction information of the login user is provided to the image forming apparatus using an intermediate server apparatus that includes usage restriction information of each user.
Furthermore, another image forming apparatus includes a usage restriction setting for a section that a user belongs to, and when a user logs in, the image forming apparatus refers to the usage restriction setting of the user to identify a function of which usage is prohibited to the section, and prohibits the login user from using the identified function.
Furthermore, in another system that manages plural multi function peripherals using a server, regarding the aforementioned usage restriction, each one of the plural multi function peripherals informs counter information on a job to the server after the job is executed.
However, in the aforementioned system, since the counter information is totalized in relation with the login user, the image forming apparatus must disable the login user for logging out until the job is completely finished.
Recent image forming apparatuses are designed so as to be enabled to process plural jobs in parallel. However, if the aforementioned system is introduced, then until a job of a user is completely finished, this user can not log out and another user can not log in, and consequently, users can not enjoy user convenience based on high performance of the image forming apparatus.